Two steps in the Evolution of Language: Merge and Grammaticalization

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Two steps in the Evolution of Language Merge and
Grammaticalization

• Elly van Gelderen
• Arizona State University
• ellyvangelderen_at_asu.edu
• ICHL 18, Montreal, 8 August 2007

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Language Evolution my aims

• Some background on what we know from genetics,
  areal linguistics, etc.
• Discuss the two steps in the development of the
  Computational System (CS)
• Argue that change is triggered by cognitive
  processes
• Explain
• the Macro-Cycle Synthetic Analytic

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As well as some Micro-Cycles

• Negative (neg)
• neg indefinite/adverb gt neg particle gt (neg
  particle)
• Definiteness
• demonstrative gt article gt class marker
• Agreement
• emphatic gt pronoun gt agreement
• Auxiliary
• V/A/P gt M gt T gt C
• Clausal
• pronoun gt complementizer
• PP/Adv gt Topic gt C

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• What we know
• 50,000-150,000art/tools
• how people/languages spread archeology and
  language-gene connection
• What can areal linguistics and reconstruction
  tell us?
• Nichols and WALS
• Greenberg
• What can (historical) syntax tell us?

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First what we know from other sources migrations
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MtDNA and Migrations
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Areal Linguistics and Early Language?

• Nichols, dependent marking none in Africa,
  Australia, etc

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World Atlas of Language Structures
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Dryers map on Case
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VO and OV
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Reconstruction and Early Language

• What works general picture of migrations but not
  the actual shape of the language
• Greenberg/Ruhlen
• Campbell (1988)detrimental effect on the
  field, misleads.
• Therefore we need to look at syntax for insight
  into evolutionary stages

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Adam Smith, 1767
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Some hypotheses on Proto-Language

• Like Smith, Newmeyer suggests that
  proto-languages may have been inflectional (2000
  385, n 4)
• Bickerton 1990
• fossils of proto-lg (aphasia/pidgin) no
  morphology no PS
• Hauser, Chomsky, Fitch 2002
• FLB (CI-SM-Mechanisms for Recursion) FLN
  (Recursion)
• Chomsky 2005
• Merge "Great Leap Forward' in the evolution of
  humans"

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What was missing in Proto-language? Merge

• (1)Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange
  give me eat orange give me you. (Nim)

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And grammaticalization
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Three separate systems?

• symbolic
• thematic
• pragmatic(?)
• sounds/vocabulary
• merge and grammaticalization

• SEM
• PHON
• NS

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From Proto-LgTo Lg

• Merge
• Grammaticalization
• Principles of Merge Economy lead to
  grammaticalization
• Merge brought about the first step of linguistic
  evolution but Cognitive Principles (Chomskys
  third factor) were responsible for further
  language evolution.

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Grammaticalization Specifier to HeadSubject
Cycle

• a TP b TP
• DP T DP T
• pron T VP pron-T VP
• Urdu/Hindi, Japanese Coll French
• c TP
• DP T
• pro agr-T VP

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Specifier to Head

• Specifier (je-il) to Head
• (1) Moi, jai pas vu ça.
• I, I havent seen that.
• (2) Et toi, tu aimes le rap?
• (3) on voit que lui il n'apprécie pas tellement
  la politique
• one sees that him he not-appreciates not so the
  politics
• and it can be seen that he doesnt appreciate
  politics that way. (LTSN corpus, p. 15-466)

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Standard to Colloquial French

• (a) Modification, (b) coordination, (c) position,
  (d) doubling, (e) loss of V-movement, (f) Code
  switching
• (1) et c'est moi qui ..
• (2) Je et tu ...
• (3) je lis et ecris

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Doubling, loss of V-movement and code switching

• (1) une omelette elle est comme ça Swiss Spoken
• an omelette she is like this
• (2) c'est que chacun il a sa manière de ...
  Swiss Spoken
• it is that everyone he has his way of
• (Fonseca-Greber 2000 335 338).
• (3) Alors pourquoi moi aussi je n'aurais pas le
  droit d'enfumer les autres quelques minutes
  dans un bar?
• Then why me also I not-have not the right to
  fill-with-smoke the others some minutes in a bar
• (4) tu vas où Colloquial French
• 2S go where
• (5) nta tu vas travailler Arabic-French
• you you go work
• (from Bentahila and Davies 1983 313).

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The Subject Cycle

• (1) demonstrative gt third person pron gt clitic gt
  agrmnt
• (2) oblique gt emphatic gt first/second pron gt
  clitic gt agrmnt
• Basque verbal prefixes n-, g-, z- pronouns ni
  I, gu we, and zu you.
• Pama-Nyungan, inflectional markers are derived
  from independent pronouns.
• Iroquoian and Uto-Aztecan agreement markers
  derive from Proto-Iroquoian pronouns
• Cree verbal markers ni-, ki-, o-/ø pronouns
  niya, kiya, wiya.

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English in transition

• (a) Modification, (b) coordination, (c) position,
  
• (d) doubling, (e) loss of V-movement, (f) Code
  switching
• Coordination (and Case)
• (1) Kitty and me were to spend the day.
• (2) while he and she went across the hall.
• Position
• (3) Shes very good, though I perhaps I shouldnt
  say so.
• (4) You maybe you've done it but have forgotten.
• (5) Me, I was flying economy, but the plane,
  was guzzling gas

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Doubling and cliticization

• (1) Me, I've tucking had it with the small place.
• (2) Him, he ....
• (3) Her, she shouldnt do that (not attested
  in the BNC)
• (4) As for a dog, it should be happy.
• CSE-FAC
• uncliticized cliticized total
• I 2037 685 (25) 2722
• you 1176 162 (12.1) 1338
• he 128 19 (12.9) 147

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Loss of V-movement and Code switching

• (5) What I'm go'n do?
• What am I going to do'
• (6) How she's doing?
• How is she doing
• (7) He ging weg he went away Dutch-English CS
• (8) The neighbor ging weg

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Other instances of the Head Preference Principle
(HPP)

• Be a head, rather than a phrase/specifier
• Acquisition
• (1) those little things that you play with (Adam
  410)
• Lg Change
• (2) Relative pronoun that to complementizer
• Demonstrative to article
• Negative adverb to negation marker
• Adverb to aspect marker
• Adverb to complementizer (e.g. till)

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DP Cycle

• a. DP b. DP
• dem D' ? D' (HPP)
• D NP D NP
• art N
• ? ?
• c. DP
• D'
• D NP
• N
• renewal

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The Negative Cycle

• XP
• Spec X'
• na wiht X YP
• not gt nt
• through LM

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Second kind of GrammaticalizationLexical gt
Functional/Late Merge
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The preposition like as C

• Acquisition
• (1) like a cookie (Abe, 3.7)
• (2) no the monster crashed the planes down like
  this like that (Abe, 3.7)
• (3) Daddy do you teach like you do // like
  how they do in your school? (Abe, 4.10)
• Language change
• (4) People have never been down and out like they
  are today
• (5) So the other girl goes like Getting an
  autograph is like, be brave and ask for it'. So I
  got it. I just went up to him and he like. O.K
  ...
• (6) 3on man is lyke out of his mynd (Dunbar
  Poems, xix, 19).
• Other cases of Late Merge
• Negative objects to negative markers
• modals v gt ASP gt T
• VP gt CP adverbials
• To P gt ASP gt M gt C

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After from P gt C

• (1)Fand þa ðær inn æþelinga gedriht swefan æfter
  symble
• found then there in noble company sleeping
  after feast (Beowulf 118-9)
• (2) æfter þissum gefeohte cuom micel sumorlida.
  
• after this fight, there came a large
  summer-force' (Chronicle A, anno 871)
• (3) Æfter þysan com Thomas to Cantwarebyri
• After this, Thomas came to Canterbury'.
• (Chronicle A, anno 1070)

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• (1) After that the king hadde brent the volum
• (Wyclyf 1382, taken over in Coverdale 1535 and
  KJV 1611, from the OED).
• (2) Aftir he hadde take þe hooli Goost (c1360
  Wyclif De Dot. Eccl. 22).
• (3) After thei han slayn them (1366
  Mandeville174).
• Four stages
• PP PP 900 (Chronicle A) present
• PP (that) 950 (Lindisfarne) - 1600 (OED 1587)
• P that 1220 (Lambeth) - 1600 (OED 1611)
• C 1360 (Wycliff) - present

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A too much work story

• CP
• C
• C
• PP
• after DP

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From P gt C (feature-wise)

• PP CP
• P DP gt C TP
• after after
• u-phi 3S (u-phi)
• ACC uACC
• In English, no phi, but Germanic C-agreement.

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From V gt AUX

• VP TP
• V DP gt T VP
• wolde uCASE would V DP
• ACC phi uphi
• uphi

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Feature Economy uF as perfection

• Economy of Features
• Minimize the interpretable features in the
  derivation
• a. Spec gt Head gt zero
• b. semantic gt interpretable gt uninterpretable (p
  hi on N) (uphi on T)
• This explains the cycles and where non-lexical
  categories came from.

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Aspect Cycle

• a. ASPP b. ASPP
• ASP ASP'
• ASP VP ? ASP VP
• up V AP up ...
• up
• ? ?
• c. ASPP
• ASP'
• ASP VP
• V AP
• up

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Perfective aspect

• Cycle
• (1) adverb gt affix gt 0
• One stage
• (2)a. Elizabeth's accession allowed him to
  receive back his wife (BNC-GTB938)
• b. a husband who changed his mind to receive his
  wife back without ceremony (BNC-HTX2122).
• - Pattern (a) has become more frequent in the
  recent period (Davies 2005), even with definite
  nominals
• In the 100-million British National Corpus,
  receive occurs nine times in constructions such
  as (2a) and four times in constructions such as
  (2b) (twice with a pronoun and twice with a DP)
• - The use of pronominal objects, typical for the
  first order, with these verbs has gone down too.

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Two other principles

• Null hypothesis of language acquisition
• A string is a word with lexical content
• (Faarlund 2007)
• Specifier Incorporation (SIP)
• When possible, be a specifier if you are a
  phrase/adjunct
• (van Gelderen 2007)

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Renewal at the end of the cycle

• Newmeyer 2006 notes that some grammaticalizations
  from noun/verb to affix can take as little as
  1000 years, and wonders how there can be anything
  left to grammaticalize if this is the right
  scenario.
• Late Merge (Feature Economy), however, provides
  an answer for what the source of the
  replenishments are, namely lexical elements from
  lower in the tree. There are also borrowings and
  creative inventions through SIP.

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New specifiers

• (1) a laide de Dieu notre Seigneur, Qui vous
  douit bonne vie et longue.
• With the help of God, our Lord, who gives us
  a good and long life' (Bekynton, from Rydén, p.
  131).
• (2) be the grace of God, who haue yow in kepyng
• by the grace of God, who keeps you' (Paston
  Letters 410).

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Conclusions

• 1 Evolution as Grammaticalization
• After the introduction of Merge, the emergence
  of syntax would have followed the path that
  current grammaticalization follows one that
  children use. Cognitive Economy Principles, from
  which grammaticalization and language change
  follow.

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2 Thematic gt Discourse

• Chomsky (2002 113) sees the semantic component
  as expressing thematic as well as discourse
  information. If thematic structure was already
  present in proto-language (Bickerton 1990), the
  evolutionary change of Merge made them
  linguistic. What was added through
  grammaticalization is the morphology, the second
  layer of semantic information.

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3 Language is a Perfect Solution to Interface
Conditions

• the conflict between computational efficiency
  and ease of communication is resolved to
  satisfy the CI interface (2006 9).
• That would mean an analytic stage is preferred,
  but there is no evidence of that!
• Therefore

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4 Analytic ? Synthetic

• Cycle goes from (a) to (b) to (a)
• a) Movement links two positions and is thereby
  economical (synthetic) uninterpretable/EPP
• b) Avoid syncretism Iconicity is economical
  (analytic) semantic and interpretable features

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Some References

• Bickerton, Derek 1990. Language and Species.
  Chicago University of Chicago Press.
• Carstairs-McCarthy, A., 1999. Origins of complex
  language. OUP.
• Chomsky, Noam 2002. On Nature and Language. CUP.
• Chomsky, Noam 2005. Three factors in Language
  design. Linguistic Inquiry 36.1 1-22.
• Chomsky, Noam 2006. Approaching UG from below.
  ms.
• Dryer, Matthew n.d. http//linguistics.buffalo.edu
  /people/faculty/dryer.
• Faarlund, Jan Terje 2007. to appear in EyÞórrson.
• Forster, Peter http//www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/genet
  ics/mtDNAworld/one.html.
• Gelderen, Elly van 2004. Grammaticalization as
  Economy. Benjamins.
• Gelderen, Elly van 2007. The Linguistics Cycle.
  to appear in EyÞórrson.
• Haspelmath, Martin et al. 2005. The World Atlas
  of Language Structures
• Hauser, Marc, Noam Chomsky, Tecumseh Fitch
  2002. The Faculty of Language what is it, who
  has it, and how did it evolve? Science 298
  1569-79.

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• Kuczaj, S. 1976. -Ing, -s, -ed A study of the
  acquisition of certain verb inflections.
  University of Minnesota PhD.
• Newmeyer, Frederick 2000. On the Reconstruction
  of 'Proto-World' Word Order. In Chris Knight et
  al (eds) The Evolutionary Emergence of Language,
  372-388. CUP.
• Newmeyer, Frederick 2006. What can
  Grammaticalization tell us about the Origins of
  Language?. Abstract, http//www.tech.plym.ac.uk/so
  cce/evolang6/newmeyer.doc
• Nichols, Johanna 1992. Linguistic diversity in
  space and time. Univ of Chicago Press.
• Piattelli-Palmarini, Massimo Juan Uriagereka
  2005. The Evolution of the Narrow Faculty of
  Language. Lingue e Linguaggio, 1-52.
• Smith, Adam. 1767. The theory of moral
  sentiments. To which is added a dissertation on
  the origin of languages. London 3rd ed.
• Tauli, Valter 1958. The Structural Tendencies of
  Languages. Helsinki.